


What Spring Does With Cherry Trees

by DinosaurTheology



Series: Johnny and Dora [13]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Cute, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Sweet, Wedding Fluff, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-20 08:52:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8243569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DinosaurTheology/pseuds/DinosaurTheology
Summary: No wedding would be complete without a singer, but when the inimitable Doug Judy auditions for that position anyone might wish it could. But really... could he leave his best friend hanging?





	1. Pontiac Best Man Mania

**Author's Note:**

> B99 not mine but I love it. And have loved DJ and Jake since their first interaction. Good way to avoid the post NREMT/hurricane blues in writing this.

In a back room of Holy Child Jesus Catholic Church on 86th Streeth in Brooklyn, New York, Jake Peralta stretches his shoulders and tries to avoid a massage from the bestest best man ever to best man, one Charles Boyle. "I just can't believe it," he says. "This is the biggest day of your life. Of our lives."

  


"Well, my life," Jake says. "Pretty sure you've got one coming up to, big guy. Y'know... you and Genevieve, right?"

  


"Right, right," he says. "My wedding. Mine. Wedding number two. My poop of weddings." He deflates a little. "I probably shouldn't put it that way in front of Genevieve."

  


"It does rob a little romance from the concept, yeah."

  


He brightens. "But this is your number one! First things are almost always best. I still remember the first time I tasted a ripened goat uterus taco with the fetus still inside..." He sighs and smacks his lips. "But I'm babbling. Weddings just make me so giddy."

  


Jake reaches back to pat Charles hand. "Me too. Heck, when you and Genevieve do get hitched I'll probably have to tie you down somewhere."

  


He nods. "We've been talking about trying that, yeah."

  


Jake blinks. "More than I wanted to know but..."

  


"What? You mean you and Amy have never tried?"

  


"Nope! And never gonna." He shakes his head. "I cuff enough folks at work, and have gotten cuffed by a psychotic defense lawyer--though that may be redundant--if you had forgotten. We are as vanilla as the beans in the all natural vanilla bean ice cream that you get at the Big Gay Ice Cream Shop, my friend."

  


"Those are some good beans."

  


"My point exactly. All natural, and totally vanilla."

  


"I think it's a good exercise," Charles says. He pastes on the thoughtful expression that tells Jake that the smaller man is wasted, in many ways, in an NYPD bullpen and should have been a professor of something, probably culinary anthropology. He makes what Jake has always believed to be a sign of deviance seem somehow tender, even holy. "It shows a willingness to be totally open, totally vulnerable, to put your life in another person's grace." 

  


And then, like Charles, he has to go and ruin it. "The only experience more intimate is washing your lover's hair."

  


Before Jake can say anything else, a voice that's smooth like chocolate winds in from the edge of the room. "I think he's right, Jake. I mean... what could be more, like, romantic styles that being all tied up with your lady and she could, like, step all on your junk and stuff but she's all gentle with it instead? I wrote a song about it."

  


Jake buries his head in his hands. "Jesus, Moses and Elijah on a cracker... and on my wedding day."

  


"Hey!" Doug Judy says. "That's those dudes on the statue right there! The Transfiguration!" He winks. "Way to keep it relevant, Peralta. That's why we got that banter. So... wanna hear that song?"

  


"I kind of do," Charles says.

  


He clears his throat, and offers in a warbling tenor:

  


_ Rosa, Rosa, Roooosa, _

_ You got me all tied up on the floor _

_ And I'm naked and stuff like I _

_ Aint never been naked before _

  


_ And you could step all up on my junk like _

_ I know you kinda want to do _

_ But maybe you won't do that cause it would hurt me _

_ Rosa with those stiletto boots... _

  


"Okay," Jake says. He holds up a hand. "Kay. That's plenty. We've heard enough. That's... plenty."

  


"I have not heard enough," Charles says. 

  


"What? Hush!"

  


"Let the man talk!" Judy says.

  


"Well, I mean it's got a good melody. That's all I mean. I love songs in A minor, and the subject has undeniable appeal."

  


He offers a hand to Charles and they pound it out. "My man's got good taste in music!"

  


"Okay, so apart from, like, helping Charles to creep me out... what the hell do you want, Judy?"

  


He looks hurt. "What you mean 'what the hell do I want,' Peralta? I came here to wish my boy and his lil' mama the best on the happiest day of their lives! I mean, I am obviously your best man and all!" At Charles enraged glower he amends it, "Well, co-best man. Like, if you two are the TV series version, we're the movie version. We're, like, played by Kevin Hart and Chris Pratt. Amy is maybe played by Monica Raymund and Rosa is Isis Love."

  


Jake rolls his eyes. "Isis Love's a dominatrix."

  


"You think I don't know that? That's where my fantasies live, dawg." He waves a hand to wipe the picture down for them. "All my dirty, dirty fantasies about getting my junk all stepped on."

  


“And none of this even makes any real sense because Rosa wasn’t even on the boat. She can’t figure into your sick little scenario anywhere.”

  


“Okay, number one, Peralta, a healthy expression of human sexuality is not sick. You need to check yourself and stop repressing me before you give me lifelong issues that can be cured only by the dedicated work of therapists and skilled sexual surrogates. And two, in the movie version she was on the boat and that movie is rated a hard R. We are talking full female frontal, maybe a dong shot, some well-simulated over the sheets action.” He nods. “Yeah. That’s the stuff.”

  


“So this is what guys talk about in locker rooms,” Charles said. “Huh. I never thought I’d learn that in the back room of a church at my best friend’s wedding.”

  


“Oh you learn all kind of stuff in church at weddings small brotha,” Judy says. “At my cousin Cornelius’ wedding at Most Holy Missionary Apostle Zechariah’s Church I learned that middle aged ladies are the best at crazy sex stuff when they get into the muscadine wine after six pm and you can buy that for a dollar.”

  


“I don’t really know if any of that is true,” Charles says, “but it really feels like it could be.”

  


“Would I lie to you?” Judy says. “Don’t answer that.”

  
  


It’s time to cut what could end up being a prodigious amount of crap. "So that's why you came back, Judy?" Jake says. "You came back to dry land, and risked arrest for your many, many felonies, just so you could give me and Amy your best for our wedding?"

  


"And give you this toaster." He gestures to a box on the table.

  


"And give us this toaster."

  


"Yeah, that's pretty much it." He winces. "Oh, yeah... and to deliver one little itty, bitty piece of bad news."

  


"What's that?"

  


"There's this one brotha out there named Bitch-Nose and he is trying to kill you all the way dead." Doug Judy smiles his wide, dopey, endearing smile. "So, uh... I hope you have a super happy wedding, dawg. We doing buffet and open bar, and do you have a singer lined up? Cause I got about a dozen new songs..."


	2. Blue Stripes and a Borrowed Hat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amy has some trouble finding the traditional lucky elements for a wedding. It's a good thing she has friends to help.

In her own room at Holy Child Jesus, one where she'd dressed for Christmas and Easter programs a little girls, had prayed before her Confirmation and been a bridesmaid more times than she cared to remember, Amy Santiago soon to be Peralta (or maybe he'd be Santiago... they'd been joking, mostly, but the idea had some merit) paced. Of course, at six months pregnant her pacing had more the character of waddling but still... something needed doing and she was the only one that seemed willing to do it. Thus the fretful bride, so round now that she stretches the seams of a cream wedding dress bought for exactly this purpose hurries to and fro on enough short, purposeful strides to cut tracks in the carpet.

Rosa, perched on the counter beside a statue of the Judge of Israel Deborah, says, "Chill, mija. You're gonna be so worn out that you won't be able to walk down the aisle."

Amy glowers at the taller, still hatefully lanky woman. She is the only bridesmaid not wearing a powder blue crinolined dress inspired by the fashions in a book on classic brides of the 1920s. Rosa has opted, instead, for a slinky, strapless black cocktail dress like ink poured over her generous, lithe curves, stiletto slingbacks and her formal leather jacket. The effect is, Amy must admit, stunning. She says, "If I can't find what I'm looking for then I might not be walking anywhere. This is... important stuff, Rosa."

"And so is getting married to my best friend, lil' mama," Gina says. In contrast to Rosa she has fully embraced the madness and glory that crinolines piled on top of each other can create and seems a gently swaying cerulean garden. "And if you're not careful you're gonna drop my awesomest niece Regina Linetti Van Helsing Kardashian Peralta right here in the floor of this sad little church."

"Okay, number one, Holy Child Jesus is not a sad little church--"

Gina cuts her off. "The facts that all the Holy Child statues are either A crying or B look like creepy, tiny old men begs to differ."

Amy presses on without even pausing to war against the foolishness. "And two, I am missing several key components, here... ones I thought would turn up!"

"What's wrong?" Rosa asks. "It's gonna be something goofy, isn't it?"

"I have my something old," Amy says. "Two of them, in fact. My abuelito's Queens County Sheriff's Office badge and Dad's State Police patch." She indicates a dark blue and gold badge in the shape of a circled star, number 113, and a black patch bearing the seal of the Empire State and the world "Excelsior" in silver that are pinned to the cream of her dress. "And I have my something new, thanks to Gina." She touches a hairband, worn on her wrist today, made from faux snow leopard fur."

"Don't thank me," Gina says. "Your spirit animal chose you, lil' mama. The snow leopard is you and you are she."

"Right," Amy says. "Right. So yeah... those are great, but my borrowed and blue just have not come through."

"Dude," Rosa says. "You could borrow anything. You could borrow my hairbrush right now, if you wanted it, and you are surrounded by cops in their Class-As. There is more blue here than most people will ever be able to handle."

"I know I could borrow anything, and I know that my whole wedding is blue," Amy says. "But... I... well..." She takes a deep breath and goes on. "I'm only getting married once. One wedding--one and done, this is it, Jake and I are an item for life. I want to do it right." She turns huge, pleading eyes on her two best friends. "Can you two help me do it right? Please?"

 

"Okay, okay," Rosa says. "Jesus. You're getting those big, shiny Disney Princess eyes."

"So you'll help me?" Amy visibly brightens. "Thank you! Er.." She pauses. "What're you going to do? It needs to be something special, remember."

"It'll be special all right." Rosa grins. It's one of those slow spreading, toothy things that can cause a hardened criminal to shit his britches."I'll be back in about twenty minutes. I've gotta see a man about a hat."

Amy paces for ten minutes, sits for five because her swollen feet and ankles have become an agony, and then paces for another five. It's only twenty minutes, a third of an hour, less than half the time she stays on her stair-stepper three times per week while reading The New Yorker, Nation or Atlantic magazine from cover to cover. She resists the urge to chew her nails since Gina and her mom, the famous Ms. Linetti-Boyle, had done such a good job on them with drawing the little owls and foxes in white nail polish against maroon but... it's hard.

Where is Rosa? Where on earth could she have gone? And what possible borrowed thing, in the wickedly humorous mind that broiled beneath those inky curls, could have provoked a smile like that? If she wasn't just a totally self-possessed young professional... Amy might have shuddered.

Rosa makes it back twenty-two minutes and fourteen seconds (but who's counting, really?) later with what looks like a Hasidic rabbi in tow. He is of medium height, not short like Charles but neither a giant of Terry's stature, and holds a hat that would not be out of place on the head of one of the three musketeers. He also seems familiar, somehow. Amy thinks, searches her formidable memory, and finally comes to the answer.

"Adrian! It's great to see you and, er..." She frowns. "Why are you dressed like that?"

"You can never be too careful." He winks a dark, intense eye. "I hope you like the 'something' we borrowed."

"Where did you get that?"

"Dude in the holding at the 99," Rosa says. "He calls himself Nicaragua Sanchez and claims to be the Majordomo of the Pimps and Muchachos. I didn't have the heart to tell him that meant butler. Anyway, he volunteered the hat."

Amy's frown deepens. "How did you manage that?"

"Oh, that was easy," Adrian says. He tilts the shtriemel back on his head. "I just sat down with him, talked man to man and showed him the pitch black depths of despair that I call a soul." He snaps his fingers. "Simple as that!"

"And super, super hot," Rosa says. "Like... whoa."

"Yeah," Adrian says. "So we kinda ended up making out in holding for a little while. It was epic."

"Two standing ovations and an encore call," Rosa says. "Can't argue with that."

Amy doesn't really have a response for that beyond an awkward hug for both of them. Gina helps to arranged the battered, plumed felt hat on top of her carefully coiffed dark hair, and says. "That takes care of something borrowed, and possibly gets you all lined up for a lice treatment in a couple of weeks... now all you need is something blue. I mean, all your friends are cops so you're floating in a sea of it, but..."

"Special. It has to be."

"Precisely. You're marrying my brother from another mother today, miss. He's not the wolf but he is, in all truth, coyote of the desert, swift and wild. That's what I called him when we were kids. He super hated it but was secretly kinda into it I think, so maybe think about that for your honeymoon."

Before Amy can even consider how to reply to that, a deep voice rolls across the room. "Perhaps my compatriots and I can be of some assistance in finding you something blue, Detective."

 

She turns to find the Captain and Terry. Amy smiles, a little apprehensive. "Captain... what do you mean?"

"I mean what I say detective." He snorts. "Very little reason to mean anything else, am I right?"

Terry nods. "Totally right, sir. Totally." He's grinning... this must mean something. Something big and, Amy hopes, awesome.

"I couldn't help but notice," Captain Holt says, "that through poor planning or another reason you lacked certain of the traditional elements that bode prosperity for a marriage. Now, if I were a cruel man I would laugh at your misfortune. It would sound a little something like this." He throws his head back and offers a baritone cackle that shakes the rafters in Holy Child Jesus.

"That is... very impressive, sir." Amy is very aware, for some reason, that she is wearing the slightly scuzzy hat of a man named Nicaragua Sanchez. "How does this help me get something blue?"

He is unfazed. "Since I am not a cruel man, however, I have procured something blue for you... something scintillating and azurine. Or, perhaps I should say, you have procured it."

She tugs her ear. "Now I'm really confused. I've been here fretting all day... how did I get something blue?"

"Would you mind explaining to the young lady, Sergeant Jeffords?"

He does so, almost unable to contain a grin so wide and bright that she's surprised that the top of his head doesn't fall off. He reads from a letter, and produces a small cellophane wrapper from his jacket pocket.

"To Detective Amy Santiago," he reads. "This letter is to inform you that you passed the New York Police Department's Sergeant Exam with a score of 98% and are hereby awarded the rank of sergeant with all the rights, privileges and responsibilities that go along with it." He claps his huge hands. "Congratulations... I knew you could do it."

She can't find anything to say... nothing at all. This is her wedding, yeah, and the best day of her life but... now she's a sergeant! This is like double best. Triple best? There are three chevrons, after all.

It's these that Captain Holt removes from the cellophane and pins gently to her wedding dress. "There. Now... I know you only scored a ninety-eight percent but... try not to be too upset. This is your wedding day, after all."

"Upset?" she says. "Me? No. Upset is not a thing I am or, no... but babble is a thing I do."

He chuckles. "Good God, woman. Show a little composure. You're among us white shirts now."

She straightens up. "Yes, sir. I promise I won't disappoint you."

"The thought of you disappointing me seems alien as an orange sky, Sergeant Santiago," he says. "I hope you are ready to command your own squad."

"Hell yeah!" Terry says. He pumps his fist. "Running two deep in the nine-nine." He claps her small shoulder hard enough to nearly send her careering to the floor. "So, Jake is mine, for obvious reasons, and Rosa and Charles, too. I call em, like, right now. But you can have Scully, Hitchcock and the dude who shaves all the time."

"Detective Lohank?"

"In all his hirsute glory."

Amy grimaces. It might be that being a sergeant isn't going to be all the super fun statistics and paperwork she'd imagined but... on she cannot deny that those blue stripes make her wedding dress gleam all the brighter.


	3. As the Nose On Your Face

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jake, Charles and Doug Judy find Bitch-nose. Jake explains the facts of life to him.

"So," Jake says. "In order to survive my wedding we have to track down this guy--what's his name."

 

"Bitch-nose," Doug Judy says.

 

Jake grimaces. "I'm all about the nicknames, and I know that your little underworld fraternity has to have them to do business, but 'Bitch-nose?' What's that even mean?"

 

Judy shrugs. "It probably means he has a nose like a bitch."

 

"See that's the thing I don't get," Charles says. "And Jake, too, if I'm guessing right. I understand a guy with no fingers, and you call him 'Nicky No-Fingers.' And you, you're the 'Pontiac Bandit' because you steal Pontiacs. But how does one have a nose like a bitch?"

 

Judy rolls his eyes. "I don't know, okay? It aint like he's part of my crew. We don't roll together or watch our kids play at the park and share recipes and talk about our nicknames. I know I steal Pontiacs, and so I got a cool nickname. Maybe he just aint that cool?"

 

"Maybe," Jake says. "Listen, I kind of think that you're blowing smoke up my butt about this, though, and you just came to be a part of the wedding and cause your general brand of havoc. Do you even know what this Bitch-nose looks like?"

 

"Never seen him, dawg," Judy says. "C'mon, I done said we didn't hang out or anything."

 

"Then there's no evidence that he even exists," Jake says. He flaps his arms. "Great. Just wonderful. We're going to be running around and not getting ready for this wedding for nothing."

 

"Okay, okay," Judy says. "I haven't seen him, but he did post on our Facebook group."

 

"New York criminals have a Facebook group?"

 

"Fo' sho," Judy says. "How else would a brotha keep in touch? I don't do Snapchat."

 

"Let me see the posting." Jake waggles his fingers, impatient but also pretty damn excited, if he was pressed to admit it. A hit out on him at his own wedding? Bad and ass. Provided of course that neither he nor, most importantly God in heaven help them all, Amy and the baby didn't get hurt.

 

Judy fumbles with his phone and pulls up a Facebook group, private of course, on the screen. There the words stand out in black on white and blue, clear as the afternoon outside Holy Child Jesus.

 

_So I hear that damned Jew from the 99 pinched my boy Slayer. Jammed him up on a date with Tina for Thor, at Odin's Ogre. He's getting married to that spic bitch he runs with on Saturday and I think Slayer'd like it if I paid 'em a visit. Any of y'all know where this little party's going down?_

Someone called Three-Toe responded with the location of Holy Child Jesus--including a Yelp! review--and earned himself a list on what was becoming, in Jake Peralta's mind, a very exclusive and negative list. He didn't like the way he was feeling, even about these people, so he shook his head to clear the rank, bloody cobwebs. Charles lays a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry that the day's turning out like this, buddy. I feel like I've really failed my best man duty."

 

Before Jake can say anything, Judy crows. "I haven't, though! Damn I'm good. Movie version for the win, baby!" He grins. "You know anything about these buttshits, dude?"

 

"I still don't know Bitch-nose," Jake says, "but I do remember Slayer. A couple of ladies and I grabbed him during my bachelor party at a wretched hive of scum and villainy that makes Mos Eisley look like the Four Seasons. It was, like, the ultimate in weird serendipity. Big, creepy AN guy."

 

"Nation?" Judy can't suppress a shudder. "Those guys are scary, dude. They're like, Chicago Police Department scary. There is a bright side, though."

 

"Yeah?"

 

"Considering your family and mamacita's family, out there, he oughta stick out like a sore thumb."

 

"That's a good point," Jake says. "I've gotta make some calls."

 

They found him sitting on Jake's side of the aisle. He stood out pretty obviously. In retrospect this should have surprised no one. There were no other men there six and a half feet tall and close to four hundred pounds with long, greasy black hair, a busy beard and a tattoo of the 14/88 logo wrapped in lightning around a skull on the side of his thick neck. Jake leans over the chair in front of him. Doug Judy and Charles follow suit. "So," Jake says. "I'm gonna guess that you're Bitch-nose?"

 

He frowns. "A Jew, Doug Judy and..." He looks at Charles. "A whatever the fuck you are. Aint this just the kitty's titties?"

 

"I like that!" Judy says. A wide grin breaks on his dark face. "I like that! That's pretty damn clever, son."

 

Bitch-nose shrugs. "I'm kinda like a poet." He sighs. "So... how's it hanging, boys?"

 

"Pretty good," Charles says. "Y'know, except for the heart pounding nature of a death threat at my BFF's wedding. Also, I kinda have one question..."

 

"Yeah?"

 

"Bitch-nose?"

 

"Well," he huge man says, "Thor says I got a nose like a bitch."

 

"B-but... your nose is just a normal nose," Charles says. "And it doesn't even really make sense."

 

"Yeah," he says, and scratches at his beard. "Thor may have been rolling some really hard stuff that night. Like... really hard."

 

"Yeah, that's a great story. But let me tell you another one." Jake has slithered around behind Bitch-nose with the quiet grace he can manage on rare occasions. He seems, somehow, to tower over the much larger man and his voice has dropped an octave, grown into a silky, deadly growl.

 

"Look," he says. "Mr. Bitch. Mr. Nose? To be truly honest idgaf, dude. But seriously... you can bug me all you want. You can stalk me, harass me, whatever. We can play grab-ass around the Borough of Homes and Churches until either Olam Ha Ba or Ragnarok. It just doesn't matter to me. If I arrest you? Awesome. If you shoot me or some shit? Sorta sucks, but it's just part of the game. I pinched your boy. I know it."

 

He grabs Bitch-nose by the beard, now, and yanks his head around to face him. "This is not cool, however, man. I'm getting married, today. Fuckin' married! And if you think you're intimidating me... if you have one little thought in your thick, Aryan skull about hurting the woman back there or my kid she's carrying..." 

 

Jake points at Charles. "See that guy? The little guy? For his wedding present that guy got me some kind of hanjo potato peeler forged by a legendary Japanese sword-smith on the side of a volcano. And if you, Bitch-nose or whatever you want to call yourself, bother my wife or my kid... I swear to God, Jesus, Buddha and Odin that I'll use it to scrape your face down to the skull. Savvy?"

 

Doug Judy bites his fist. "Damn, son! You just got told. No he didn't, no he did. Not!" He giggles. "You gotta work that into your vows, dog, like... I gotta make a song of it! Some kinda heavy metal shit." Charles, for his part, has greened slightly in horror at the thought of his precious wedding gift being put to such use.

 

Bitch-nose manages to extricate his beard from the smaller man's tight fist. "If you're done speechifying," he says, "I'll tell you what's actually going on here. Now, I'm no fan of your people or the police or... much of anything other than drinking beer and listening to Abyssic Hate, but you really did Slayer a solid when you arrested him."

 

Jake's face falls in confusion. "Wanna run that one by me again, BN?"

 

"Slayer's my cousin and he was getting way in over his head with drugs and shit when you collared him. Notice how he was kinda goofy when you brought him in?"

 

"Yeah, but I just thought he was stupid."

 

"He is, but that was the drugs talking. He was using way too much and now, up at ACF, he's getting some counseling for it. If not for you, man, he might have died. I just want to thank you."

 

"Oh, er... you're welcome. So I probably won't have to grate your face, then."

 

"Shouldn't come to that. And in honor of your wedding." He offers up a little keg. "Some craft mead from my brewing stand. That'll go over great at the reception. Wassail on your wedding, little mud-man."

 

"Mazel tov, you great big ugly troll."

 

Bitch-nose laughs. "This could be the beginning of a truly weird friendship."

 

Jake grimaces. "I sure hope not... I've got enough on my plate with that guy." He motions to where Doug Judy has taken the mead cask and begun work on breaching it.

 

"No kidding."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figured if anything would set the peaceful, chill Det. Jake Peralta off it would be any possible, perceived threat to Amy. Even the nicest man can be pushed too far, after all.


	4. What Spring Does to Cherry Trees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth."

Amy looked beautiful, truly and completely, coming down the aisle. It was impossible for him to imagine her any other way, of course, but even in the totally biased opinion of Jake Peralta it seemed as if she had a special glow in the gown she'd chosen, one that might have looked right at home on a Disney princess. Even festooned with a Nicaraguan pimp's hat, two vintage police badges, a hairband made out of faux snow leopard fur on her wrist and an NYPD sergeant's stripes pinned to the breast it seemed to shimmer with an iridescent grace. Jake could not stop smiling; could anyone, literally anyone in the world, blame him?

She moved slowly, stately, in accordance with tradition and her increasingly delicate condition. He could feel her feet itch to rush, to fling herself down the aisle and into his arms. He fought the same feeling. It would have looked rude, though, to leave Charles, Terry and Doug Judy standing here like the Three Stooges while he and his bride crashed together in a crested ocean wave and made out right in the center of Holy Child Jesus' sanctuary while the Stations of the Cross and a severely dyspeptic looking statue of the infant Christ looked on.

There was no snow leopard for her to ride, according to better judgement and against the Thelemic calculations for a perfect wedding as performed by one Regina Linetti, but she traveled flanked by two of the three most important men in her life. One was a little shorter than average, pot-bellied and wore a mustache. Opposite her father was Captain Ray Holt, an immovable slab of dark granite with all the warmth and light in the world buried in the glacial depths of his complex personality. He, who had been functionally married for longer than anyone she knew except for her parents, had provided the marriage counseling to the couple.

"Peralta," Jake remembers him saying, "Santiago... the keys to a happy marriage lie in communication, trust, undying loyalty... and often separate bathrooms." He'd smiled, reminiscing in a hopefully never to be revealed moment from his own marriage. "People all too often overlook that last element. All too often."

They meet at the altar. Reb Andy is there, with the whole wedding party. He is older now, his bushy eyebrows and short, well-trimmed beard entirely silver, but still spry. He says to Jake, "How your grandmother would have been proud. She's watching you still, I'm sure, with such joy in her eyes and heart." He pronounces the seven blessings, finishes by saying and then repeating in English, for those who did not speak Hebrew, while the couple clasp each other's hands.

"Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech Ha-Olam, asher barah sasson v'simcha, chatan v'kalah, gila rina, ditza v'chedva, ahava v'achava, v'shalom v're'ut. Me-hera Adonai Eloheinu yishama b'arei yehudah u'vchutzot yerushalayim, kol sasson v'eKol simcha, kol chatan v'ekol kalah, kol mitzhalot chatanim me-chupatam, u'nearim mimishte neginatam. Baruch Atah Adonai mesame'ach chatan im hakalah. Blessed are You, Adonai, our God, Ruler of the universe, Who created joy and gladness, loving couples, mirth, glad song, pleasure, delight, love, loving communities, peace, and companionship. Adonai, our God, let there soon be heard in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem the sound of joy and the sound of gladness, the voice of the loving couple, the sound of the their jubilance from their canopies and of the youths from their song-filled feasts. Blessed are You Who causes the couple to rejoice, one with the other."

Reb Andy chuckles. "Now unless you want it in some ugly Greek, uglier Yiddish or truly hideous Lithuanian that's the best I've got!" After the general laughter subsides, he says, "Now I think you two have some vows prepared, yes? If you do, then go ahead. The people want to hear them."

Amy goes first, looks up at her groom with shining dark eyes. "I was an artist when I was younger. I play around with paints and clay still, once in a while. I don't do it often enough to be good, just enough to know I'm not. I studied art history in college, can tell you almost anything about how painterly Matisse is or is not, what Mondrian could mean or the wax Dali used on his mustache. Poems..." She frowns, hates to admit any weakness even here. "Poems are kind of not my thing. At all. But... there are a few I love. One is by Pablo Neruda. It starts with, 'Every day you play with the light of the universe,' goes on to, 'you are like nobody because I love you,' and finished with, 'I want to do with you what spring does with cherry trees.'"

She grasps his face in her small, brown hands, presses her lips against his for a brief instant. "That's what I want, and I want the same from you. I want our dust to be mingled forever and forever and forever. You are mine, I am yours and we are ours." She takes a deep breath. "I don't know if that makes any sense, but it's all I have to say."

He smiles, grins like an idiot really, and says. "I'm not good with words--like, you pretend to be so you can do something like that and just wow us the hell out, but I am really, really not. I had some words prepared but..." He blows a hard breath. "They really sound kinda super freaking dumb, now, just like... total crap. I did threaten to peel a guy's face off today, if that means anything to you."

She grimaces. "Should it?"

"Ah, never mind," he says. "I guess what I'm trying to say is, in the words of the great philosopher Curtis James Jackson III.." He pauses and launches into the worst impression of anyone ever heard by anyone anywhere, "'Yo, I loves you like a fat kid loves cake!' So... we're gonna do this thing--you, the little guy and me. We're gonna do it right. We're gonna do it forever and forever and forever... although the dust thing?" He wrinkles his nose. "That sounded kinda gross."

She giggles. "That's Ezra Pound, goober."

"The guy who writes for Newsweek?"

"No, that's Ezra Klein just..." She grabs his face, again. "Shut up and kiss me, Jake."

"So passionate..."

"No, I'm six and a half months pregnant and I really, really have to pee."

Their lips meet again for a long, tender moment and, in that instant, the rest of the universe really does disappear. Though it is a fall wedding, cherry trees do seem to somehow bloom and they, together, can contend against all the powers of gods and men.


End file.
